New York
CNN
—
Pat McAfee, the ESPN host at the moment embroiled in a feud with a executive for alleged “sabotage,” mentioned Monday that his relationship with the community is “sturdy” and that he doesn’t remorse any of his feedback.
On Friday’s broadcast of “The Pat McAfee Present,” the previous NFL punter mentioned ESPN head of studio manufacturing Norby Williamson was leaking false details about the present to media retailers.
“There are some individuals actively attempting to sabotage us from inside ESPN,” McAfee mentioned on Friday. “Extra particularly, I imagine Norby Williamson is the man who’s making an attempt to sabotage our program.”
He continued his ire on Monday, however didn’t particularly point out Williamson’s identify when the subject was introduced up on his every day, three-hour-long speak present.
“There was some feedback a couple of explicit individual at ESPN that I solely made on the YouTube and ESPN+ present. It wasn’t on linear TV,” McAfee mentioned concerning the 2pm ET hour that doesn’t air on ESPN’s cable community the place he talked about Williamson final week. “I didn’t know anybody was going to listen to it.”
McAfee continued that his remarks have been a “matter of debate” over the weekend and the one factor he was “tremendous bummed out about” was that ESPN’s president of content material Burke Magnus, who oversees the studio exhibits, “was made to look unhealthy due to what I did and the way I did it.”
McAfee went on to say he “cherished” a variety of ESPN executives, together with Magnus, chairman Jimmy Pitaro and Disney CEO Bob Iger.
“However there’s fairly a transition period right here between the outdated and the brand new,” McAfee mentioned concerning the 44-year-old sports activities community. He mentioned the “outdated don’t like” the brand new, doubtless in reference to Williamson, who has been with ESPN since 1985. McAfee joined ESPN lower than a 12 months in the past.
“Now there’s definitely folks that we don’t like they usually don’t like us,” McAfee mentioned, with out naming one specifically. “That’s the way it’s going to be and I don’t take again something I mentioned about ‘mentioned individual,’ however the general storyline about us and ESPN … is that we’re sturdy, child.”
Some see McAfee as a little bit of a free cannon who has been allowed to curse and veer into strongly opinionated areas from which different ESPN hosts and company are typically barred.
He not too long ago discovered himself in the course of a firestorm when visitor Aaron Rodgers, the New York Jets quarterback who has shared varied conspiracy theories prior to now, prompt that late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel’s identify may seem on the checklist that has been released over the course of the past week associated to associates of Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in jail whereas awaiting federal sex-trafficking fees in 2019. Kimmel had criticized Rodgers in years previous for his views and conduct on coronavirus vaccines.
Kimmel, who like McAfee is paid by Disney, erupted in anger in a heated response on X, previously generally known as Twitter. McAfee apologized final week. Rodgers has not commented.
Final Thursday, The New York Post noted that McAfee’s TV scores are decrease than his lead-in, suggesting the score are maybe not excessive sufficient to justify the $85 million contract the Submit reported ESPN has paid him to air his present. Though the report didn’t cite any unnamed sources, McAfee mentioned on his present Friday he believed Williamson was behind the report and others within the media.
McAfee mentioned Williamson was “the one human that has that data — after which one way or the other that data will get leaked, and it’s unsuitable, after which it units a story of what our present is.”
ESPN defended Williamson final week.
“Nobody is extra dedicated to and invested in ESPN’s success than Norby Williamson,” an ESPN spokesperson mentioned in a press release. “On the similar time, we’re thrilled with the multi-platform success that we have now seen from the ‘Pat McAfee Present’ throughout ESPN. We are going to deal with this matter internally and don’t have any additional remark.”
McAfee confessed that he doesn’t like Williamson, personally.
“That man left me in his workplace for 45 minutes — no-showed me — in 2018,” McAfee mentioned Friday. “So this man had zero respect for me and in return: similar factor again to him.”
McAfee routinely says on his present that he’s simply attempting to have enjoyable and speak sports activities, including levity to individuals’s lives. However ESPN is a part of Disney, a media behemoth and that usually comes with a bunch of guidelines and journalistic expectations related to it, together with the expectation of fact-checking and issuing corrections for inaccuracies.
However McAfee not often does that. He lets his company speak, unchecked, for lengthy stretches, even after they make outrageous claims. And his present comes with a crawl that notes it’s a free-flowing, typically comedic dialog that doesn’t essentially mirror ESPN’s opinions, including, “Don’t sue us” on the finish of the repeating message.
McAfee mentioned he feels unfairly handled.
“We have now good intentions, each single time we are available right here,” McAfee mentioned Friday. “We don’t all the time get it proper. However m*therf**kers been getting it unsuitable for a very long time, on this particular discipline – a very long time.”
CNN’s Oliver Darcy and David Goldman contributed to this report.